Here is one page from the summer sign up for full time operators. The 1st column on the left is the amount of hours that one run pays one operator.
A full time operator on a full time shift would appear as an "8" in the left column.
But as you can see, there is not one 8 hour shift there, every single shift pays more than 8 hours.
In other words, every single shift that is on this particular page has overtime programmed right into it.
How can an agency survive if they can't run services without paying $40 an hour to run it?
Just another example in the wealth of examples of an agency out of control.

Portland A-Foot has been covering the 'budget' problem since the executives manufactured it.This is from the blog:

Update, 3:19 p.m.: The Oregonian’s Joe Rose (who, unlike other mainstream outlets reporting on this, attended today’s hearing) has the first really solid story
on the budget. If the union deal isn’t reached, it’ll open a new, $14
million hole – about half the size of the one TriMet closed, with great pain, last fall.Update, 4/14: Rose writes below to say TriMet has a
new estimate of the cost of keeping the current contract:$12 million,
not $14 million. (A couple months ago, TriMet GM Neil McFarlane estimated the service impact at $10 million. I don’t know whether that was an earlier version of the same number, or a slightly different number.)

Now it's $17 million? Can we believe anything that comes out of Trimet management?

Trimet executives are not reliable in the reporting of budgets, they have proven over and over to distort facts to support whatever outcome they desire.

An outside independent audit of Trimet finances is an absolute necessity.

Absolutely fascinating
how elimination of WES isn't even under consideration or debate.
They'll prop that fucker up until we have one bus line that costs
$10/trip, I imagine.
Try met would rather eat crow in a labor dispute where they look
decent, than eliminate an OBVIOUS boondoggle. WES in another time and
place, another economy, with Salem's participation, might be a really
slick thing. But for now, it's a total drain on the rest of the system.
Ah well, it was once a pretty hip transit city. Gotta get those 1200
daily Wilsonites to the Beav and back at any cost, I suppose.http://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/s59ts/trimet_final_budget_plan_eliminates_free_rail/c4b8wfm